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Drug Firm That Sells $1,000 Brain Cancer Pill Drops Medicare Program

It dropped out after hiking the price from $50 over the course of a decade.

Over the last eight years, the pharmaceutical company NextSource has hiked the price of a drug for brain cancer patients from $50 to $1,000 a pill, even though the patent for it is expired. Now, according to The Wall Street Journal, the company is dropping out of a program for Medicare patients that made Gleostine more affordable. NextSource did not explain its decision and says patients can ask the company for financial assistance. But experts say it’s a blow to those with glioblastoma and some other brain cancers. “The problem is that patients with this terrible tumor now no longer have easy access to one of the few approved chemotherapies,” Dr. Patrick Wen of the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute in Boston told the Journal.